The cameras worked well and were easy to set up. Customer service was equally helpful after I contacted them regarding one camera not working. A new camera was sent with exceptional service. I'm very satisfied!

General Overview:Bought the 4-camera ZHXINSD version with the PTZ (pan, tilt, zoom) remote function, and the 10" LCD color display base station. They have several different security camera systems with different versions of cameras on their Amazon page and I figured I'd start out trying the 4-camera set rather than spending too much on a set that included more cameras. They sell additional cameras that you can add, and this particular model can add up to 10 different cameras (the LCD base station has a grid view that lets you see all 10 camera images at the same time). The cameras are wireless and all came paired to the base station right out of the box, and the camera batteries were already charged, so after turning on everything, the entire network was up and running in less than a minute. Literally, the camera images showed up on the base station within a minute after turning on everything. As someone who previously worked as an engineer, I couldn't help but open up the rear of the camera to see what's inside. I found three 18650 Li-Ion cells in a shrink pack inside the camera body, covered by a plastic panel with an integrated rubber gasket to prevent water intrusion. That beat my expectations, and I've found that most of these types of cameras only have two of those cells inside, albeit I don't know their mA power rating. The camera batteries are charged with a USB-C connector at the bottom of the camera. If you have a dedicated permanent USB-C power source, you could run the cameras for continuous monitoring without running down the batteries, but otherwise the cameras have a built-in motion detector that only turns on when they sense motion. This helps minimize the battery consumption. The version/set that I bought included solar panels with a USB-C connector. This way, I wouldn't have to do any rewiring to keep the cameras charged and powered. This version came with a removable 64GB micro SD card for storing videos locally inside the 10" monitor base station, although they do have an option to let you pay a subscription to purchase cloud-based storage. I guess the advantage of cloud-storage is that if anyone ever stole or broke the base station, that you won't lose all your videos. I've found that it doesn't record continuously, but rather it only records whenever the cameras sense motion, and then shuts off a few seconds after it doesn't sense motion. I believe there is a setting that allows you keep the cameras continuously powered-on. Doing so will deplete the batteries unless you have a permanent dedicated power source. Otherwise I can foresee that the cameras would run the batteries flat overnight if left for continuous monitoring rather than simply coming on when they sense motion. About 10 random videos clips lasting 10-20 second each (from people walking around in front of the camera) took up about 1GB of data on the data storage card. At that rate, it looks like the 64GB card can store up to 2 months worth of these mini video clips before the system overwrites the older card data. I found that there is a compartment on the back that allows you to install a SATA 2.5" hard drive or SSD drive, which means if you get yourself a cheap 500GB or 1TB hard drive, it'll probably have enough space to store a year or more worth of videos. I'm also sure you could get yourself a bigger capacity Micro SD card to achieve more storage, but as for now, it seems the 64GB card that came with it is enough. The cameras themselves have a slot for a Micro SD card, although when I inserted one for a minute and pulled it back out again to check for any data, it was blank so I'm not sure if there is a special set-up procedure or if maybe I just have to leave that Micro SD in the camera for a longer period to allow it to go through its write cycle. I couldn't find any clarification about how the Micro SD slot works on the camera itself. A more technically inclined individual could probably figure out that feature, but personally I wasn't intending to leave a Micro SD card in the camera anyway, because even if I needed to retrieve the data from the card installed in the camera, it would be too much hassle climbing up to where the cameras are located to pull out the card...but I believe if it works, it should be a nice local data storage backup in case the transmission or base station has a glitch.Camera Functionality:The cameras are solidly built, pretty good quality. Mine were the PTZ (pan, tilt, zoom) version, meaning you can remotely move the camera up/down, and left/right. I thought that was a nifty feature although my current concern is that after several months or years, that dirt, bugs, etc may all get stuck in the gimbals and cause that feature to cease working. The image quality is pretty good for a security camera. You can see images of persons and identify them by facial features if the individuals are within about 15ft of the camera. The quality is about the same as a high quality car dash cam. Beyond maybe 15-20ft, facial definition isn't as good so you can identify people wandering around but can't really see their faces enough for law enforcement to do a positive ID. Color rendition is pretty good for a security camera, although because of data compression, and technological limitations on CMOS sensors, you sometimes see artifacts (blocky/grainy areas). I've tried and tested various security cameras previously and the image quality is pretty good compared to others. I'd say that the image quality is pretty on par with most mainstream doorbell security cameras. The cameras provide a wide field of view, but don't have a fisheye image rendition that you find with most doorbell cameras. This limits the perspective field of the camera, but the benefit is higher definition images that you can use the digital zoom to enhance parts of the camera image. At night, the units revert to four built-in infrared lighting sensors that are integrated adjacent to the main optical lens. The night-time images are sharp and crisp, but are black-and-white only. It appears the sensor reverts to black/white infrared mode rather than low-light color at night. Even in my pitch black backyard, at night, the camera infrared lights appear to pretty clearly illuminate about 50 feet away which is relatively impressive. The pan/tilt/zoom function of the cameras is dependent on your base station. When the base station is only 5ft away, the movement of the camera is pretty instantaneous. When the base station is further away and outside, there is a time lag of about 2-3 seconds. In my setup, I have one of the cameras mounted under an aluminum gutter, with a Spanish Tile roof. The base station is about 20 ft away with only one exterior wall between the camera antennas and the base station. The camera outputs its signal strength to the base station, and under this kind of setup, I get about 50% signal strength. At this weaker signal strength, when I try to remotely pan or tilt the camera, there is a 2-3 second lag. What I have to do is quickly tap left/right or up/down, and then a few second later, the camera will move a little bit. I have to do these little taps, or else holding down the pan/tilt would always overshoot where I want to aim the camera. I had the first camera fully charged, and running nonstop for a half hour while I was installing it, and the charge level indicator on the base station showed that it lost one bar of power in that half hour period. I didn't run the battery completely dead to see how long the battery would last (that is bad for Li-Ion cells), but if I extrapolate based on my brief experiment and do an educated guess, I would say that a fully charged camera battery could probably get you around 5-6 hours of nonstop usage, which could also be affected with the use of the white built-in lights or infrared built-in lights. The solar panels that come with the kit are pretty good quality and appear to be monocrystalline cells. The panels include a base that attaches to a solid surface with three screws, and has a swivel mount with a tripod-style screw-on adapter for the panel that lets you position the panel for the best angle toward the sun. I found that even when a panel is in the shade, that the camera would still show that it's charging. This gives me confidence that the panels will still work in cloudy weather. The solar panels had approximately a 8ft cable, so you have a lot of options to position the solar panel closer to where you can get the most sunlight. Since the cameras are constantly charging during the daytime, I had no issues with excess power consumption. The cameras are all showing full power bars during the daytime. At night, with minimal activity to trigger the motion sensors, all cameras still had full power bars in the morning. Given that my prior experiment shows the camera can operate for probably 6 hours continuously on a full charge, if set for motion-detection activation, it's understandable why it barely consumes any power on standby. Therefore, I believe if strictly set for motion-detection, then even if you don't have a solar panel hooked up to it, a fully charged battery with the camera set for motion-detection activation can probably operate for a couple months without being charged. The cameras have two antennas that are supposed to help reduce dead zones. No matter how I positioned the antennas (scissor style, both vertical, both horizontal, one vertical and the other horizontal) the signal strength remained the same. Therefore other than trying to fill in transmission dead zones, and assuming that one of the antennas isn't just a dummy for the sake of visual appearances, the dual antennas don't improve signal strength, but rather only appear to help reduce dead zones. The cameras themselves have a base that slides into a plastic bracket. The bracket is screwed onto a substrate with two screws. At least in my kit, screws came included for installing the solar panel base, but the camera bracket didn't come with any screws. Not sure if that's just a hiccup in my kit, or if all kits are like this. Luckily I had a spare bag of stainless steel screws that I used to mount the brackets for the cameras. Although the gimbal part of the camera can be mounted facing upward, I can foresee that water and dirt would collect in the exposed gap between the camera and the gimbal body. Therefore although one of the cameras would have been more ideal for me to mount upside down (there is a setting in the software that lets you invert images if you mount it upside down), I didn't do this because of fear that it would ruin the unit if water and debris started collecting inside the gaps. At least if mounted with the gimbal toward the bottom, the top part of the camera has as domed plastic hood that appears to help protect the unit.Base Station:The base station image quality is equivalent to an entry level PC tablet. It's good enough for a generic monitor, and has probably a 120-degree field of view before the image start fading at extreme viewing angles, and it nowhere near the visual quality of an iPad or Galaxy tablet albeit you aren't paying for that level of monitor quality. There is an HDMI output port, so if you wanted to connect it to a bigger monitor or TV, it looks like this would be possible. The 10" base station monitor requires a 12v DC power adapter which is included. There is no way to install batteries to make the base station truly portable. There is a plastic kickstand that allows you to place the monitor base station on a table, but there are also mounting holes that allow you to install it on a wall. For now, I've left it sitting on the nightstand next to the bed. The wired optical mouse that was included with the unit is subpar. It's a very basic mouse and didn't seem to track very well. The mouse pointer skipped around and didn't track smoothly regardless if I was using a dedicated mouse pad, the wood table, or on a sheet of paper. I checked the optical sensor and there was no dirt or debris on it. I swapped it for a basic Hewlett Packard optical mouse that came off of an old unused computer and works fine, so my experience could be indicative of the quality of the mouse that is included with the kit, or could also be that I got a dud. Given that you can get a 2-pack of optical wireless mice for under $10 here on Amazon, I'm not complaining at all. Just giving you my experience thus far. The menu options on the base station are pretty simple to follow, and gives a lot of information. I didn't read the instruction booklet for the base station and was able to navigate it pretty much by intuition.The APP:There is a phone APP that you can download. I have an Android phone, but looks like there is a version of the APP for iPhones too. It only took about a minute to download on a 5G network. If your base station is connected at home either through ethernet (cable included) or through WiFi, then you can access the data from that base station through your phone. The APP setup was pretty easy (you open up a QR code on the base station, and point your cell phone camera to it, which takes you to the download site). From that point forward, the APP did not automatically find the base station despite the APP "searching" for a network. I found that I needed to open up the base station menu to find another QR code that provided the base station ID information, pick the first alternate setup option on the APP to "scan QR code", scan that QR code showing on the setup menu of the base station with my phone, and then it would automatically load the parameters into the APP. The APP pairs with the base station through your home network, and allows you to use your phone for remote viewing of video, OR allow you to use the phone APP to use the tilt/pan/zoom function of the cameras. My experience is that there is a 5 second lag between when you tap the tilt/pan/zoom on the APP until the camera actually activates. There were several times where perhaps due to a weak transmission signal or lag time from the base station to the camera, that I'd try to tilt/pan the camera through my APP by tapping the left/right/up/down on my phone, but and nothing happened for 10 seconds.... and then the camera would suddenly get the signal and overshoot where I was trying to point it. I believe this is a signal and location related issue, given the nature of wireless cameras and limited bandwidth. I did not try doing a direct ethernet connection, which perhaps may solve the lag issue. Nonetheless, I don't expect to do much tilt/pan with the cameras since they are pretty much set up the way I want them for ongoing monitoring. I only foresee having to tilt/pan the cameras remotely if I need to scan the local area. The cameras have a built-in microphone and built-in speaker. The speaker is plenty loud...because when you turn on the camera for the first time, it has an automated welcome tone and pre-recorded voice. The built-in microphone doesn't seem that sensitive. When you unmute the microphone, and speak near the camera if standing about 10 feet away, it is barely audible at the base station. On the phone APP, I tried testing the "speak" function to transmit my voice from my phone to the camera speaker, which I can foresee might be convenient to talk with delivery persons. After trying it the first time, I didn't get the speaker function to work because the APP froze and lost the network connection. After trying multiple things, it would never re-establish the network connection on my phone. Eventually I had to fix it by uninstalling the APP and reinstalling it, but I haven't dared trying the "speak" function again for fear of locking up the APP again. The APP itself is fantastic. You can set it for alerts, so that whenever the cameras detect motion, it gives you a text message and then you can review the snippets of videos that the camera captured. You can also do live views of the cameras through the APP, to wake them up and do a real-time streaming view. The things recorded on the APP has a delay, meaning if you walk in front of the camera, then like a half minute later, you finally get the notification. If someone is outside throwing rocks through your window, that person will be long gone by the time the APP notifies you. It's a consequence of technology rather than the product itself. I believe due to network and bandwidth limitations, all systems of this type are going to suffer some kind of real-time transmission lag. The APP itself is free and there are no monthly charges, as long as you don't opt for the cloud storage. As long as you have the base station with a Micro SD card or install your own separate SATA hard drive, and ethernet or WiFi at home to gain access to the data on that base station, then the APP is free to use without a subscription and allows for local storage of videos which you can see on your phone.Overall, I'm very pleased with this purchase, and the usability is a lot easier and quality better than expected. I was also contacted after purchase by Emma, a customer service representative from the ZHZINHD who simply wanted to follow up and make sure everything was fine and good. So, it appears that this is seller/company takes customer satisfaction seriously.

One of camera had a switch on off was broken/This camera will work good for sunny area not working good for North Americans solar panels were not supplied enough change for cameras operating full day

I currently have 2 Nest outdoor cameras since 2018 and I've been paying $80 annual subscription fee for 2 cameras for the first 6 years but they recently changed to $130 this year in 2024 so it was time for me to look for alternative solution that's less expensive. After doing extensive researching, I purchased this solar security camera system because it had so many advantages over Nest outdoor camera. The price of this camera system was not much different from 2 Nest outdoor cameras but this camera system provides the following benefits and advantages over the Nest cameras:1) Subscription FREE - this is probably the most important feature where this system does NOT have any subscription fee so I don't have to pay $130 every year to use the security cameras like the Nest cameras.2) 4 security cameras - It's more than enough to place them around the house for entrance, garage, backyard, and side entrance. I get 2 more coverage areas with this compared to my old 2 Nest cameras. I'm sure the Nest subscription would be much more than $130 if I had 4 Nest cameras.3) Easy wireless installation - Each camera comes with a solar panel, which means the camera can be installed anywhere without having to drill hole and run wires from inside. While Nest camera has wireless WIFI connection, I still had to drill holes on sidings to run and connect the AC cable to power the camera itself. For this camera system, the solar panel can be placed away from the camera where it gets enough sun lights and it will recharge the camera during the day so they can work at night!4) Monitoring control center - it comes with 10" screen that automatically pairs with 4 cameras out of the box and I can see all 4 cameras real-time from this control center screen. Nest cameras must be the app on the smartphone but this camera system has standalone camera monitoring screen in addition to an app for the smartphone.5) Easy to use app - I rely on the monitoring control center to look at the cameras at home but I can also check all 4 cameras when I'm not home using the the app installed on my smartphone. I get notifications on my phone when it detects motion and can listen/talk through the camera.6) Advance options - It has option to turn on the light on the camera when motion is detected or sound an alarm to scare off any intruders. I can also pan and tilt the cameras using the app or control center, which is not possible with the Nest cameras.7) Expandable - While it comes with 4 cameras and solar panels, I can purchase additional cameras to expand up to 10 cameras! This is such an amazing feature for those who need more than 4 cameras.8) Did I mention that there's no monthly or annual subscription fee? This is such a great investment and will not incur additional cost after the purchase, not to mention super easy and simple installation without having to incur electricity!There are so many feature and amazing options for this camera system, and the app is very comprehensive and easy to use. I love that I don't have to pay annual subscription fee for my old Nest cameras and I get more cameras with this system, in addition to not having to use my phone to look through the camera at home because of the control center monitor. Highly recommend this security system to those who does not want to pay any endless subscription fee.

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